Hands

How the “Must Rescue the Angel” obsession began!

Enjoy another Eden Adventure!

I wanna talk about The Angel Who Would Be Crowley.

Because I had a certain set of expectations, which got thoroughly trashed in the first five minutes of S2, and my genuine response is, "Oh, fuck, yup. You're right. That's WAY better."

Looking around at GO fandom, I'm not alone in this. So let's talk about it.

Basically, a lot of people (myself included) believed that he was a high-ranking angel, and therefore as chilly and remote as every other powerful angel we'd seen at that point. We pictured Crowley-To-Be as long-haired, regal and imposing --and the fanart at the time reflected this. I'd link some if Tumblr didn't hate links.

Something like this:

We were collectively drawing on a few things --mostly, Crawly's appearance and general bearing in the Biblical scenes of S1--

--But also scattered hints of his importance, backed up by conspicuous absences in Heaven and a few profound displays of power. That's all better covered elsewhere, so I won't reiterate the arguments here. All I'm saying is: I think our headcanons were justified.

But it turns out he was this:

!!!

With his curly little--!!

And his neat white--!!

IT TURNS OUT, he was an angel who squeaked and squealed when he was happy; who flailed his arms around and made explosion noises with his mouth to explain nebulas; who preened when told his stars were pretty. Furfur, who knew him before the Fall, says:

"You used to jump on me back, little monkey in a waistcoat..."

(The use of a diminutive there, 'little'...oh, that fascinates me.)

In a pretty huge subversion of expectations, we're given these glimpses of an angel who was sweet, and joyful, and heart-meltingly silly.

In sum...an innocent.

(Perhaps innocent to a troubling degree.

We see how he troubles Aziraphale, during their first conversation. He starts looking around and behind them, checking to make sure that no one can HEAR the blithe and reckless things coming out of this angel's mouth. This angel who talks like he's never been reprimanded in his life; like it's never occurred to him that anyone would want to hurt him.

Before the Beginning, Aziraphale understood Heaven better than he did. The danger is plainly occurring to Aziraphale.)

So now, we the viewers are in on a cruel joke that Aziraphale has known all along, which is that this --THIS-- is the angel who--

*checks notes*

--did a million lightyear freestyle dive into a boiling pool of sulphur. For asking questions.

...Imagine you are Aziraphale, and everything inside you wants to believe Heaven are the Good Guys, and God is Good and Everything She does is capital-R Right...and now try to reconcile that. Keep trying. I don't think he ever totally managed it in 6000 years.

All this gets further complicated when we learn that, despite all of the above, we were still right. That sweet excitable babby up there?

He WAS a powerful and high-ranking angel.

That much is explicitly confirmed, with significant evidence that he could have been among the mightiest of archangels...

...Who apparently accosted his fellow angels for piggyback rides. And was remembered millennia later by those (now fallen) angels as something 'little.'

What does that tell us about who he was? Is?

Hell, Aziraphale has known to be wary of the archangels (and the judgements of Heaven in general) since before the Fall even happened. He chooses to believe they are Good; he can't fool himself into thinking they are Safe.

Yet he's absolutely certain that Crowley won't hurt Job's children. Enough to stand in a burning building and say to them, "I can't save you, but don't be afraid. I won't need to."

And what reason does he give?

("I know you."

"You do not know me."

"I know the angel you were.")

What does that tell us about who he was? Is?

("The angel you knew is not me."

But how is Aziraphale supposed to believe that, when he can see him all the time?)

tl;dr --yes, this is better. I love the tragedy of it.

'Innocence died screaming' and all that.

Hot beverages from season 2 ☕️

I made these into stickers hehe

season 1 vs season 2

Why all the ducks? 🦆

Good Omens has always been my favorite book. I've seen some posts from people wondering about the prevalence of ducks. I wanted to share my interpretation of why the ducks keep popping up* so that other people can appreciate how clever the writing in my favorite book is.

The word duck is in the book a lot. Aside from the actual ducks in the duck pond, there are several references to popular expression about ducks. Notably all the duck quotes are botched or incorrect in some way, so the reader has to know what the correct expressions actually are in order for the joke to work. For example:

Crowley forgetting the phrase "like water off a duck's back": "Ducks!" [Crowley] shouted. "What?" "That's what water slides off!" Aziraphale took a deep breath.

The same phrase is referenced later: whenever she tried to think about him beyond a superficial level her thoughts slipped away like a duck off water.

And we have "like a duck to water" to describe Aziraphale's dancing while he had initially taken to it like a duck to merchant banking, after a while he had become quite good at it

The English language has a lot of expressions about ducks and the book expects the reader to be familiar with them. The one that I think is significantly conspicuously absent from the book is "If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it's a duck." I think that the point of the other duck expressions is to evoke this one, since it's the whole thesis of the book. Good Omens is about humanism and self determination. Adam isn't human, but he is shaped like a human so grows into being a human. He looks like a human and quacks like a human. He is a human. His parents are his parents. His hellhound is a cute dog. And he chooses to keep it that way. Aziraphale and Crowley get so used to being human shaped they'd prefer to keep doing that. They don't have to be enemies and can determine their own fate, just like Anathema and Newt and all their other mirrors. So by choosing humanity and embracing what I guess you could call human performativity, they all get to be what they want to be. So I think that's the significance of the ducks. *despite Crowley dunking them

Secret Santa part. 2

Here is my second secret Santa gift for @carnival-of-vanity !

Some lesbians!Ineffable romans

Can't believe it was my first time drawing Ineffable wives ?? What a shame, I need MORE

1967: you go too fast for me Crowley, or the year the Wolfenden report actually came into effect.

It is no secret that in 1957 the Wolfenden Committee recommended the decriminalisation of private homosexual activity between consenting adults over the age of 21, but with heavier penalties against homosexual activity in public places.

This is precisely what Anathema thinks of when she comments in the book that her book had been left in the back of the car of 'two consenting cycle repairmen'.

Not only does that inform us as readers that the characters within the book perceive Crowley and Aziraphale as being a couple, especially by the (arguably) cleverest witch in the book, but also that their appearances (physical corporations) do in fact look older than 21 years old. (the age of consent)*

*It would take until the 2000s for the age of consent to be equalised, and for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender personnel to be able to serve openly in the armed forces.

But coming back to the term 'consenting' and the significance within the overall plot of Good Omens series-wise is the fact that they chose 1967, precisely 10 years later after the Wolfenden report and the year the Sexual Offences Act was passed (which decriminalised private homosexual acts between men aged over 21 in England and Wales, while at the same time imposing heavier penalties on street offences) as a crucial point in storytelling.

This is the last scene we see of them after the montage; this is precisely the point where Aziraphale makes that big, first move towards Crowley and manifests himself inside of the Bentley to protect him from a burglary that could have ended in disaster. This is Aziraphale stepping outside from his own box and venturing into admitting that yes, he would enjoy Crowley's company as more than just an Arrangement. He would like the picnics, he would like to dine openly with him.

And this comes precisely at a time, a real world setting where even the Archbishop of Canterbury agreed, saying: “There is a sacred realm of privacy ... into which the law, generally speaking, must not intrude" (referring to homosexuality).

Although we know Aziraphale and Crowley are not men, but rather men-shaped beings of the world, there is something to be said about how the 1967 act reflects on Aziraphale's 'heavenly' beliefs and how that can be attributed not only to homosexuality*, but also a realm of privacy where neither Heaven or Hell (religion itself) need to interfere with his affairs.

*we do know, however, how much the book and tv series lean into Aziraphale being 'gay', at least in our human understanding of labels and categorizing even though he is not; "pansy" "nancy boys" "gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide" (this one specifically marking Aziraphale canonically in the book as appearing to be a homosexual) "you've got the wrong shop" among others.

A real life anecdote from the time says: John Carter was 17 at the time and doesn’t have a clear memory of the bill passing; he only realised the significance of the change with hindsight. He came out in the early 70s, after making contact with his university’s gay society, which wouldn’t have existed were it not for decriminalisation. “It meant that people could meet … and freely associate.” That was crucial, he says, because, “if you don’t even have a space where you can go, then people are cruising, they’re cottaging * ... It took many years for people who had been constantly looking over their shoulder, being worried, to develop proper ways of relating to each other. Ways that were not just based on sex or compromise or fear.”

*(No, cottaging is not living in a cottage)

No matter that the law had been passed, there was still a lot of stigma surrounding the word 'homosexual'. It wasn't until the 80s and 90s that it stopped being a crime in Scotland and Ireland; being further stigmatized with the AIDS crisis in the late 80s.

Regardless of the nature of the open confession Aziraphale lays bare to Crowley in 1967, it most definitely can be read as a 'coming out' for him. Perhaps not dealing with sexuality directly, but with religion layered on top of that. It is still too fast despite of the year, in spite of the millennia worked together under false pretenses. But it is an exterior, real life push that reinforces the idea for him to see that- if humans are able to recognize that man could be with man and not call it a crime, why could that same thinking not be applied to an angel and a demon living on Earth?

Aziraphale is doing more than blurting his heart out, he is openly hoping for the time that matches 1967 in its decriminalisation of homosexuality to one that applies for him and Crowley. So the thermos, the "better not" say thank you just yet, is a lingering promise to be there for when it finally happens. One which Crowley accepts with bare, open hands.

Freddie as a guardian angel!

He’s playing his music from a magical recorder that reaches whoever needs it ❤️

For mrbadguymercury

An angel and a demon in Eden🍎